The curtain will fall on the 65th on Wednesday 1st May Booksellers’ Fair. Balance sheets will be drawn up in the end, anticipates Antonio Terzi, president of Confesercenti Bergamo and of the Italian booksellers and stationers union, but the mood around the event is more than positive: «It is a lung that breathes, a demonstration that sustains itself». However, “bookstores need to live every day of the year.”
It is on the basis of this premise that Terzi contextualizes the difficulties that exhibitors are facing: «In the first three months of the year the Italian Publishers Association certified a drop in sales of approximately 5%». In 2023, 111.9 million books were sold throughout Italy, for revenues of 1 billion and 697 million euros. In the Bergamo area, according to data from the Chamber of Commerce, they operate 50 bookshops, 137 stationery shops and 17 publishers.
2022 was the most critical year: 3 bookshops and 11 stationery shops have permanently lowered their shutters. Now a new decline in sales, which adds up the lack of some government initiatives to support the sector. Terzi lists them. The so-called 18app, i.e. the culture bonus intended for newly eighteen-year-olds, «is no longer a universal measure, but has been linked to income. And, therefore, to a bureaucracy that is discouraging kids.” The so-called “tax credit” for bookshops was then cut: “It went from 18 to 8 million euros – says Terzi -. It was a fundamental contribution to support rent and staff expenses.”
In the second part of the year, however, Antonio Terzi fears the repercussions of failing of the library bonus: «Of the 30 million euros at a national level, 1.2 million arrived in our province, through a mechanism whereby at least 70% had to be spent in local bookshops». Net of the cuts, Antonio Terzi’s regret is for what he denounces as the absence of discussions with the government: «At this moment – he says – towards publishing, in general, there is a total closure. I often talk to local parliamentarians, but apart from words of understanding of facts, very few are seen.”
The education sector is also suffering. Due to the increase in prices: «Last year – explains Terzi – prices rose by 6-7%, this year a further 3% has been added to the price lists». And also for the delays in reimbursements from the Municipalities, or for the requests for unsustainable discounts on primary school texts, as well as for the «competition from large-scale distribution for texts starting from middle school, which sells books for three months of the year undeclared below cost”.
